Once Upon A Peasant
by La lumire de la Lune
Summary: I was never meant to be a princess, in all honesty, I was never meant to be born since my father has apparently been dead for 18 years and I'd only been alive for 16. I lived a nice normal life until I met Lady Quinn Fabray and Lord Blain Anderson, both wards of King William Schuster, who succeeded his brother after his supposed death. A rather Royal Glee fic Full summary inside AU
1. Chapter 1

**Hum, um, this is gonna be really weird but I got this idea when I saw an advert for a new Disney Junior show when I turned the TV on.**

**Disclaimer! I own nothing.**

**Summary: I was never meant to be a princess, in all honesty, I was never meant to be born since my father has apparently been **_**dead**_** for 18 years and I'd only been alive for 16. I lived a nice normal life until I met Lady Quinn Fabray and Lord Blain Anderson, both wards of King William Schuster, who succeeded his brother after his supposed death, so either my mother lied to me, or my father lied to my mother. But along with this growing mystery I also had to learn to be the princess and the heir the people have been waiting for ever since King William's son died in the floods of the last year, and maybe fall in love along the way.**

**OOC-ness **

The dust streets of the village were crowded and noisy, Rachel found herself unable to bear it. The closeness of all the people made her claustrophobic and way too warm. She felt as though she couldn't breathe and that wasn't a feeling she enjoyed. She removed her midnight blue cloak exposing her thin green dress and cooling her down. She didn't know what everyone was doing out there either, but having spent the last few weeks on a journey with her cousin, Santana, she didn't know much of what was going on. She had only returned that day to find the streets full of people and as soon as Santana had seen that she had gone off to find Brittney, leaving Rachel alone in the crowd.

Rachel groaned and tugged at her hair; she spun around and tried to get through the crowds. Eventually she got to the front of the mass of people but found herself tripping over the foot of another person. She landed roughly on the ground with a small 'oof'. "Why does this always happen to me?" She muttered to herself. Suddenly a pale, slender hand reached down to her. Rachel took the hand she was offered and let herself be helped up.

The girl who had helped her up had pale skin and blonde hair, she smiled sweetly at Rachel who couldn't help but smile back. "Thanks, um..."

"Quinn, Quinn Fabray." The blonde girl introduced. Lady Quinn had just seen her fall over someone else's feet and then offered to help her up and Rachel was amazed that she couldn't care less.

"Well, thank you my lady," Quinn pouted at the formal title, she didn't want the pretty girl to talk to her in such a formal manner, Rachel just didn't want to risk her head being removed from her shoulders.. "I must say I'm quite embarrassed, I..."

"Don't be." Quinn told her. "Embarrassed, I mean. What is your name?"

"Rachel, Rachel Berry." Rachel heard Quinn gasp and saw her put her hand over her mouth. "My lady? Is there something wrong?" Rachel asked with an undertone of something akin to worry.

"No, no... not at all. I merely remembered something I had forgotten to do. Excuse me." Without waiting for Rachel to acknowledge her Quinn ran back to where her guardian was on his horse and quickly mounted hers.

"We will be staying with one of the village families for the night before we move on." Her guardian, King William, told her. "I have some business to attend to."

"My Lord," Quinn started. "May I ask why we are here in the first place? This is the place my father fell in battle is it not?"

"It is, Quinn." William replied curtly.

"Don't mind him Quinny," Blaine smiled from the other side of the king. "Our dear guardian has been in this mood ever since we got here."

"It might have something to do with the annoying crowds we brought out." Quinn mused and grinned at Blaine.

"Maybe, or it might just be his-"

"Enough! Both of you. I do not want to hear one more word out of either of you until the morning, are we clear?"

"Yes, My Lord." The two wards of King William said in unison.

"Good. We're staying here." William pointed to one of the largest houses in the village. "The horses will be taken care of by the knights. I expect you to be respectful and behave; I will be back before night fall." William turned his horse to leave.

"Wait! Where are you going?" Quinn called.

"I said not one word, Quinn!" William snapped at her. Quinn looked down ashamed and shuffled her foot. Blaine wrapped a reassuring arm around her shoulder and squeezed. Neither of them said anything as they watched their guardian ride off into the distance.

After Rachel's encounter with the Lady Quinn Fabray she realised that was the reason everyone was on the streets, they were all trying to get a glimpse of the royal family. Rachel shook her head and moved towards a market stall. She had some money left over from her trip and decided she should get something nice to make for tea for her return. The stall was run my Sam Evans, he was a nice guy, always bothered about everyone else and how they were doing. Add the fact that he would listen to Rachel sing as much as she wanted and he was a favourite of hers.

"Seen the royal family yet?" Sam asked her as she paid. Rachel nodded.

"I had the honour of speaking to, the _Lady Quinn Fabray." _Rachel put on a voice when she spoke Quinn's name. Both she and Sam giggled, neither of them thought much of the royal family, they had a whole lot of money and all they ever seemed to do was take more from them in the way of taxes, it was safe to say that neither of them felt very many positive feelings towards their king.

"Oh, well that must have been a _charming_ conversation." Sam spoke, putting on the same voice.

"Oh darling it was." They both fell into fits of laughter and found themselves unable to speak. Suddenly two girls came up behind them.

"You two making fun of the royal family again?" The dark haired one asked. It was Santana with Brittney.

"Why yes my dearest cousin Santana." Rachel spat out between giggles.

"Well, my dearest cousin," Santana began sarcastically. "I suggest you stop for the night since they will be staying with you."

"Wh-what!" Rachel spluttered. "But why! There are much bigger houses here, they could stay there." Rachel knew she was lying, the only place bigger than her house was probably the barn or the Lopez residence, and since the former was not really a suitable place to stay and the latter was always full of the sick and injured; her house was almost definitely the only other place they could stay.

"Rach, we all know that's not true." Santana said patronisingly. "And, besides, you might find that they _don't _live up to your expectations."

"Please, San," Rachel scoffed. "They're rich aristocrats, I'm pretty sure they're all the same." She turned and smiled to Sam. "See ya, Sam." Rachel waved goodbye to the trio and bounced back to her home.

"Mom?" She called from the door. "I bought something nice to cook for tonight since I just got back." Rachel waited for a while but there was no answer. "Mom?" She moved further into the house. "Are you here?" Another pause. "MOM!"

"Rachel" Her mother scolded when she walked in to the same room as Rachel. "Stop shouting like a common urchin! We have guests." Rachel glared; she hadn't honestly believed Santana... until now.

"Oh!" Rachel tried her best to sound surprised. "Who?"

"Lady Quinn Fabray, Lord Blaine Anderson and, when he returns, King William. Now do you understand the importance of manners?"

"Yes, mother. I apologise." Rachel did look appropriately ashamed at her lack of consideration for the royal family, not that she really had any.

"It is not me you should be apologising to, Rachel. You interrupted their conversation with you screeching." Her mother, Shelby, snapped.

"Yes, mother. I will apologise by the end of the night, I promise." Shelby contemplated her daughter for a while before saying;

"You better. Or I swear..." Shelby left the threat hanging and said it in a way that made Rachel know that this was no idle threat.

"Yes mother." Shelby left the room and Rachel alone. Rachel groaned and stomped her foot a little. Rachel didn't go straight to apologise to the royals; in fact, she did everything she could for the rest of the day to avoid them... and then the king came back.

Rachel had hidden away in her room since she got back, unpacking the small amount of clothing she had taken on her trip with Santana. It wasn't until the sky began to turn dark that Rachel decided she needed to leave her room and apologise for 'interrupting royal conversation'. She groaned and rolled her eyes. Why did they deserve special treatment? Just because they have money and a title didn't make them special in any way. If they wanted better treatment they should earn it, not have it handed to them on a silver platter. That's what Rachel believed, very firmly.

Unlike most of the village, Rachel's house had stone elements to it in the form of a small staircase that ran up to a second floor on which her bedroom and a spare room were housed. Rachel padded her way down said stone steps and into the small, compared to other rooms, kitchen. Her mom was stood making, what looked like, soup. "Hey, mom." She gained no reply. "Look, I know I haven't apologised yet, I'm going to do it right now. I…" Rachel trailed off after getting no immediate reaction. "Mom?"

Shelby sighed and placed the knife she was using on the table behind her. "You're so grown up." She whispered. "My baby girl's not a baby anymore." She moved towards Rachel and placed a hand on her cheek with tear filled eyes. She quickly wiped away her tears with her other hand. "But I'm just being silly. It's just that, this trip you just took, the one with your cousin, it just showed me… showed me that you don't need me anymore. You can survive the big bad world on your own now. You don't need me to dry your tears when you wake up after a nightmare, screaming your poor lungs out. You don't need me to sing you to sleep when you think there's a monster under your bed."

"Mom? You're kind of scaring me…" Rachel said warily. Shelby retracted her hand immediately and laughed.

"I'm sorry, Rachel. I don't do it on purpose. You're a beautiful young woman and I love you, you know that, right?"

"Mom…"

"Sorry." Shelby perked up. "The soup's nearly done. Are you ready to meet the King?"

"As I'll ever be." Rachel murmured and followed her mother through to the dining room.

The table that was usually set for just two had been set for five. Their finest everything laid out to impress their guests. Rachel had to restrain herself from sighing and making a rude comment. It wouldn't do well to upset the royal family, no matter how much she disliked the lot of them, she would rather keep her head _attached _to her body, thank you very much. At the head of the table sat King William, to his right was Lord Blaine and his left was the Lady Quinn Fabray.

Rachel watched as her mother gently placed the pot of soup on the table and, not too sure what the formalities were when dealing with royalty, stood off to the side, hoping no one would notice her. It wasn't as if Rachel hadn't grown up being respected. She wasn't a peasant, at least, not really, only officially. They had more money than the average peasant, left to them when Rachel's father moved on, apparently. They had a bigger house, better materials, and nicer clothes. They didn't have servants, though. For one thing, Rachel would never agree to be waited upon and, for another, they didn't have quite that much money to their name, no matter what the rumours around the village suggested.

Eventually, Shelby waved for Rachel to sit next to Quinn and the meal proceeded from there. Rachel found the whole thing exceedingly uncomfortable. She noticed the King staring at her almost every time she looked up throughout the meal and the conversation was forced between them at best. Quinn and Blaine seemed perfectly at ease and chatted away with Shelby like there was no tomorrow.

Rachel was relieved whenever she was asked to help her mother clear the dishes from the table, anything to get away from _that_ situation. She was all too happy when the meal finally came to an end and she was free to leave the house again. She'd been cooped up in her room far too long already that day, she had decided, and so went to visit Sam. Leaving the house was the only thing on her agenda at that moment in time.

Unfortunately, before she got to leave, she heard something that would change her life forever. She just wasn't sure whether it was for the better, or for the worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N **

**We're pretending Rachel looks more like her father than her mother, okay?  
Also, I haven't decided on pairings yet, so if there's someone you want to see Rachel paired with drop it in a review.**

Rachel paused by the kitchen when she heard two voices coming from inside of it. One she recognised, and the other she didn't. She assumed the second voice must have been that of the King as she felt, with the amount of talking he had done, that she would recognise Lord Blaine's. It was the logical assumption, then, that it was the king and she didn't have to wait long to be proved right.

"... Rachel's father. She seems like a lovely girl, albeit a little quiet." The voice of king William sounded soft and calming. It was so unlike any tone Rachel ever thought one would hear from a Royal that she was momentarily in shock before registering that they were talking about her and decided to stay and listen to the conversation rather than going straight to see Sam.

" She is, but she's not usually this quiet, my lord. Most of the time I can't get her to shut up. But why the interest in her father, if you'll excuse me for asking."

"Of course, but I do not think I am able to tell you without influencing your answer."

"Oh," What, Rachel thought, why does he want to know about my father. Even I don't ask about my father and he's _my _father. She didn't understand what was going on, and now, as she knew the topic of the conversation, she didn't want to stop listening. Oh, she knew it was wrong, she knew that if her mother caught her there would be severe consequences. but she just didn't care. She wanted, she needed, to know what was going on. Why was the king so interested in her? It just didn't make sense.

"Well, I suppose he looked a lot like her. Everyone has always told me we look alike but, well, they never saw her father. We got along so well but he never told me much about himself. He was very secretive and he always wanted to move around. When we found out I was pregnant he was desperate to marry me but he couldn't and he never explained why. He just said it was too dangerous, that he couldn't be the father our baby deserved, that she wouldn't have a stable life. So we moved far away from anywhere we had ever been before, where people didn't know us and set up this house. He went around telling everyone about his lovely wife being pregnant,"

Rachel gasped but she wasn't heard. Her parents weren't married? It went against everything she'd ever heard. Her mother... Her mother had lied to her. But she could think about that later.

"He told me he'd set me up here. No one would ask questions. He left a few days later, told the village that he had had a letter from family and was needed to defend them or something. Whatever the case, he never came back. I don't think he ever planned to. It wasn't long after that, that my sister moved here with her daughter, another girl around Rachel's age. I lied to her as well, and to Rachel. She knows none of this." Shelby closed her eyes and shook her head. "Sometimes I wonder if maybe I should tell her the truth, tell her what really happened. But then, then I think of the hurt look my baby would get and I don't." Shelby shook her head and laughed humourlessly. "But you don't want to listen to the ravings of a torn mother. I'm sorry for wasting your time, you Highness. You asked about her father. He said his name was James Leroy, never gave his last name so we made one up." William abruptly stood up.

"Would you have said he was taller or shorter than me?" He asked.

"Oh, um, taller, I think. But I may be wrong, you must understand that I haven't seen him for fifteen years, milord."

"Yes, of course, I realise that, Ms Berry. I just need you to be as detailed as you can." Shelby nodded and started up with a description of Rachel's father.

Meanwhile, Rachel still stood just a little to the right of the doorway, listening in on the private conversation that seemed to be something about her. "Eavesdropping, my dear cousin." Rachel gasped and spun around to face Santana.

"Santana!" She hissed. "What are you doing?" Santana just shrugged at her and smirked.

"What are they talking about?"

"My father." Santana frowned in confusion but nodded all the same and started listening to what the King had to say.

"Did he, perhaps, leave anything. A note, a letter, something for your daughter to read about him? Something to, maybe, hand her on her eighteenth birthday?"

"Well, yes, of... how did you know?" Shelby asked suspiciously.

William let out a long breath. It was almost too good to be true, he knew that whatever this letter said it would not tell the girl that she was a princess, it would not tell the girl that her father is the lost king of the land. Surely it would not. He could not let himself get his hopes up for such a ridiculous fantasy that would never come true.

Unless it did.

He did not know what he would do if it were true. If this Rachel really was his brother's daughter. It was almost too much to hope for. But surely, surely the gods owed him this one thing. This one small mercy. A piece of his brother his lost so long ago. He didn't know why the thought had occurred to him in the first place. Why he sought out the girl's mother when she was alone to question her. His brother had been dead, apparently, for eighteen years and this girl was only sixteen. It could not be true, the laws of physics demanded that it wasn't and yet... Yet he felt a familiar pull to the girl. The pull of a family member long lost. The protectiveness that tugged at his gut every time he laid eyes on the girl. It was all too much for him. The signs were all there. He needed it to be true. It just had to be.

"It... It happens to be a family tradition of ours, if we know that we will not see it through to our child's eighteenth birthday we leave them a letter to tell them everything they need to know. Everything we think it is important that they know." William gave Shelby a level stare, willing her to realise just what, exactly, he was implying with his words. Shelby gasped and covered her mouth.

"You-you can't seriously be, I mean, forgive me, my Lord, but." She stuttered out in short gasps.

"Indeed I am. If there is a letter, Ms Berry, I'm afraid to say that I must see it immediately." William pressed. Shelby nodded dumbly and fumbled around in one of the kitchen drawers. She slid her hand to the very back of it and even further back, right to the very wall the unit was attached to.

With shaking hands she brought out the aged envelope she had been waiting so long to give to her daughter and was now giving to a stranger, even if he was the King. The paper was as clean and smooth as it had been the day Rachel's father had given it to her with the strict instruction _not_ to give it to her until she was eighteen under any circumstances. Shelby hoped fervently that she was doing to right thing.

She handed the letter over to William who, with equally shaking hands and silent anticipation, carefully tore open the seam. His eyes scanned the letter quickly, only picking out a few words in his first glance. _I'm sorry... I never meant... I love you... be careful... are a princess._

There, William stopped and nodded once, firmly. "It is so, I would recognise my brother's hand anywhere and the letter only confirms it. Rachel, she is... she is my niece and the heir the kingdom has been waiting for."

"What does this mean? For Rachel, I mean." Shelby asked.

"It means... it means that I must take Rachel with me, back to the castle. Get the court to confirm the handwriting in this letter is that of our late king and then we crown Rachel as the princess." William was grinning from ear to ear.

Rachel, in shock and fear, backed into an ornament and sent it crashing to the floor. Shelby and William's heads turned sharply in her direction and they saw her, hiding there, for the first time.

"No." Rachel whispered with tears in her eyes. "No." She turned and fled ignoring the voices that called for her to come back. She ran and ran until she didn't know where she was, until the sky had gone dark and she knew it was long past time that she should be safe at home. But she didn't care.

"I don't want to be a princess." She whispered brokenly into the wind and went down crying. It was all she could do not to just lay there until she died, to escape the terrible fate she thought would await her if she returned home. What would Sam think of her now... now she was one of them. Would he still want to listen to a royal snob sing? Would he still want to be friends with someone who is part of a family with more money than sense? And would she ever get to see her mother, if everything turned out to be true and they crowned her princess?

The thoughts just made Rachel cry even more. Most little girls dream of being a princess, of meeting the royal family and getting expensive and lavish gowns. But then, Rachel most certainly wasn't most people and she had most certainly never wanted any of that.

Why must it have been her? Why not kind hearted Britney? She had dreams of castles and knights in shining armour and princes and balls. She would have been much better suited for the role.

Without even realising it, Rachel had cried herself to sleep in the middle of the dank, wet forest floor.

She was lucky that no one unfortunate happened upon her that night. She was lucky that she did not freeze to death in the bitter cold winter but only thanks to the cloak she had worn in preparation to see Sam. She was lucky to even be able to find her way home the next day since she had run blindly into the forest and paid no attention to the directions in which she was turning. She knew she had to face facts and those facts were that she was _not_ a princess. But, she realised, the only way to prove that is to pretend that this princess thing could be true in the first place and leave with the royal family.

Well, she supposed, she could suffer that if only to get her life back. Her nice, quite, normal life with her cousin and her mum and her best friend. She would suffer almost anything if she knew she would get that back at the end of it. Because that's all Rachel really wanted, the be ordinary and let the rest of the world do their extraordinary things. She was happy with the praise for her voice she got in her village but would never want to pursue it further. Just like she would never, ordinarily, want to pursue her being a princess any further. But in times of desperation, she would have to.

She would have to apologise for her rash actions, to her mother, to her guests, to the King. She was not yet ready to entertain the possibility that the man might be her uncle. Not yet. She wasn't sure she ever would be. But for all her protests and reasoning, she knew that it was true. That everything was true. But that didn't stop her being determined to find some way to stay in this life. She would not stop until she had exhausted every possibility, not unless... unless someone... special, interfered. Not unless there was someone worth staying_ for_.

**Fin.**

**Now you see why I need to know a pairing? I want to introduce them to each other in the next chapter. So, any preferences, review or pm. It could be Quinn or Blaine if you wanted. I am not against writing slash of any description. She you have free reign of the characters, basically, as long as they're students in the series.**


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